Ellie laughed.
Ellie packed her mother’s bags and placed them in the car. Before Sarah herself got in, Rachel hugged her sister, kissed her on the cheek, and said, “I’ll see you soon, Sarah. I’ll come upcountry for a visit when I get back from Christmas in California. I love you very much.”
Sarah smiled, her eyes showing not a glimmer of recognition. But she said, “I love you too,” as if she remembered the shape of love, if not its face.
As soon as they were out of sight, Rachel finally allowed herself to weep.
* * *
Ruth sensed from the moment that Rachel walked through Gate 7 at San Francisco International Airport that something was—off—with her makuahine. She had never seen Rachel looking so weary after a flight to California; usually she couldn’t contain her excitement. But she was, Ruth reminded herself, eighty-three years old, and more than entitled to feel exhausted after six hours of flying.
As soon as Rachel caught sight of Ruth, her face brightened.
“Welcome back, Mother,” Ruth said, embracing her. She said the word easily now; after twenty-one years, she was able to accept the fact that she had two mothers and that loving one was not a betrayal of the other.
Ruth noted a slight puffiness in Rachel’s cheeks. “Long flight?”
Rachel gladly let her take her carry-on. “Yes, very. But how is Frank?”
The week before, Frank had been in a traffic accident coming home from work. His car was T-boned on the passenger side with enough force that it slammed the side of his head into the driver’s-side window. The glass didn’t shatter, but the impact perforated his left eardrum.
“He’s recovering, thanks,” Ruth said as they headed for baggage claim. “The doctor thinks the eardrum might heal on its own in a few weeks, so he’s keeping an eye on it for now. If not Frank might need surgery to repair it.”
“But he wasn’t otherwise hurt?”
“A few bruises on his face. He tells people I beat him.” Rachel laughed at that. “The new Pontiac fared worse, it’s in the shop.” More soberly she said, “How are you coping on your own? Without Sarah?”
“I miss her. But I’ll—what’s that word Etsuko told me?—gaman.”
At home Frank greeted her warmly, the side of his face swollen and purpled, his ear bandaged to prevent infection. “The doctors say I need to take things easy,” he said, “so it’s going to be a quiet Christmas.”
That was fine with Rachel, who was more fatigued than she tried to let on. At dinner she ate sparingly and took only a few bites of the ono, delicious, roast beef Ruth had cooked for everyone but herself. “I’m a little nauseous from the flight,” Rachel explained, though the flight had nothing to do with it.
Ruth didn’t give this another thought, but the next morning, when her makuahine awoke looking just as tired as the day before, she began to worry. “Did you not get a good night’s sleep?” Ruth asked.
“Oh, I find the older I get, the less I sleep.”
Despite her fatigue, Rachel found the holiday delightful. She spent time with Ralph and his family, with Horace and Stanley and their large broods, and most important with Don and Peggy. Peggy was now married to a fellow vet, David Tanaka, though both were too busy with their veterinary practices to start a family yet. Don—who was quick to tell his tūtū about an upcoming trip to study coral reefs in the Maldives—had married Trish, and Rachel was introduced to their seven-month-old son, Charles Kenji Harada. Rachel was immensely moved by their gesture and held the infant tenderly in her arms, tears in her eyes, thankful and amazed that she had lived long enough to be holding her great-grandson.
With Frank under orders to rest, Ruth was kept busy handling the cooking, but even in the midst of the holiday chaos she began to notice things that rekindled her concern for Rachel:
Her mother seemed never to eat very much, and had a different excuse for it each time. The puffiness in her face did not go away after the airplane flight, nor did the exhaustion Ruth glimpsed every day in her eyes. Several times Ruth caught her rubbing her back as if it pained her, but her mother had never exhibited any back problems before.
On Monday morning, as Rachel sat in the living room with Frank, watching television, Ruth went into Rachel’s bathroom with a scrub brush, sponge, and a can of Comet, intending to scrub the sink and counter—but quickly forgot both when she looked into the toilet bowl.
The toilet had been flushed but, to Ruth’s horror, she saw a spattering of blood-red droplets freckling the face of the water.
* * *
Frank went to take a nap, and once Ruth was alone with Rachel, she sat down next to her on the living room couch and said, her tone solemn as a prayer: “Mother, please be honest with me. What’s wrong with you?”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s blood in your toilet bowl.”
Rachel winced. How had she missed that? She didn’t want to admit the truth, but the fear in her daughter’s eyes shamed her into confessing.
“My … kidneys are failing. It’s a side effect of the sulfa drugs they give us to treat Hansen’s disease. I’m sorry I kept it from you, but … it didn’t seem an appropriate subject for the holidays.”
Ruth was shocked, but not yet alarmed.
“So if you stop taking the drugs,” she asked hopefully, “will it get better?”
“I’m … afraid not,” Rachel said, and saw the fear this sparked in her daughter’s eyes. “My doctor says my kidney function is down to eighteen percent. One kidney has stopped working altogether. At fifteen percent you enter what they call end-stage renal failure.”
“But—they can do something, can’t they?” Ruth asked, desperation creeping into her voice. “What about this new treatment—dialysis?”
Rachel sighed. This was just as hard as she thought it would be.
“The doctors say it’s not practical yet for end-stage kidney failure,” she told Ruth. “And frankly that’s just as well. I wouldn’t want to spend eight to ten hours a day, every other day, lying in bed, having my blood filtered through a machine.”
Ruth hadn’t felt this kind of fear and helplessness since the day her okāsan had had her heart attack. “There must be something they can do!”
Rachel shook her head. “All they can do is treat the symptoms. I take a diuretic for high blood pressure, an iron supplement for anemia. And I have to watch my diet. Even so, I … probably have only about two months before I reach the last stage.”
Ruth could barely get out the words: “And … and how long before…”
“Anywhere between two months to a year,” Rachel said stoically.
Ruth’s mind was a welter of shock, grief, denial, anger.
“How the hell can you be so calm about it?” she demanded. “You sound like you’ve given up, like you won’t even put up a fight!”
“I won’t win this fight, Ruth. I can put it off, but in the end I’ll lose.”
“No!” Ruth cried, as if through sheer force of will she could command fate, reverse time. “You’ve got to fight it!”
Rachel heard the anguish in her daughter’s voice and put a reassuring hand on her arm.
“Ruth—don’t you see?” she said softly. “The last twenty-three years have been … a miracle. In 1946 I was dying, literally dying. I’d made my peace with God. Then, suddenly, I wasn’t dying anymore. I was cured; free. The sulfa drugs gave me new life, another chance at life.
“I left Kalaupapa. I found my sister and my brother on Maui. I found you. I couldn’t be there to play with you as a child, but you allowed me to play with my grandchildren and to watch them grow up into such fine people, so pono. And on this trip I was blessed to be able to hold my great-grandson in my arms. Can’t you see how miraculous that is?”
Tears were streaming down Ruth’s cheeks.
“Yes, the sulfa drugs are killing me,” Rachel said, “but without them, I would never have known the love of my only child.”
She embraced Ruth and the
y sat holding each other until Ruth pulled back, wiped away her tears, and said, “All right—however long you have, we can spend it together. Ellie can pack up your things, ship them here to—”
Oh God, Rachel thought. This is hard.
“Ruth,” she said sadly, “I can’t stay here.”
“What?” Ruth was incredulous. “Of course you can. We have some of the finest doctors in California in San Jose, you’ll receive the best of care—”
Rachel just shook her head again.
“You watched one mother die a slow, terrible death,” she said gently. “I won’t let you watch another one die the same way.”
Ruth protested, “But it’s not about me, I—I want to take care of you!”
“It is about you. For me it is.”
Ruth’s anger was spent, but her need was still great.
“Mother, let me do something for you,” Ruth implored. “Please.”
Rachel understood. She had felt the same way after Haleola’s death. She had anticipated that her daughter, so much like her in many ways, might feel the same need. “There is something you can do for me, Ruth.”
“What is it? Anything.”
In her bedroom, Rachel opened her purse, took out an envelope, and handed it to Ruth.
“If you feel comfortable doing it,” Rachel said, “I would be honored to have you speak the same words for me that I said for Haleola at her funeral.”
Ruth tried not to start crying again. “The—honor would be mine.”
“Thank you. And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth sooner.”
When Frank awoke from his nap, Rachel also told him; she was moved by the tears it brought to his eyes.
Now that there was no longer any need for Rachel to hide her condition, Ruth saw its effects up close. She had never seen her makuahine looking so frail, so vulnerable, but as she had been for her okāsan, Ruth was there for Rachel: she kept her company through sleepless nights, massaged the cramps in her legs, and helped her to the bathroom when she got nauseous. There was a tenderness of spirit between them now, a new appreciation of the quickening moments they shared, that drew them closer than ever before. Ruth would cherish that closeness for the rest of her life.
Frank called Don and Peggy, suggesting they come say goodbye to their tūtū for the last time. Don, who had flown back to San Diego after Christmas, flew right back to San Jose. Peggy drove down from Modesto. Rachel was happy to spend just a little more time with them.
And while they were visiting with their Grandma Rachel—reminiscing about the games she had played with them when they were little, their trips to Hawai'i, Christmases past—Ruth slipped quietly out of the house to make a special request at Onishi’s Florist Shop.
In the airport, on the day of Rachel’s return flight to Hawai'i, the whole family was at the gate to see her off. After Don, Peggy, and Frank had each embraced Rachel in turn, Ruth surprised her mother by reaching into her tote bag and pulling out a pink carnation lei that she now draped around her mother’s neck.
“These last twenty-three years have been a miracle for me too,” she told her. “Ā hui hou aku, Makuahine.”
Until we meet again.
Rachel’s eyes filled with tears. “Ā hui hou aku—akachan.”
The mix of Hawaiian and Japanese pleased Ruth, made her smile. She gave her mother one last hug—and then she had to let her go.
* * *
Rachel returned to Maui and to the house without Sarah, not having told the full truth to her daughter. She had not told her that her doctor had advised her against making this trip, fearing it might be too much of a strain on her already weakened immune system. Nor had she told Ruth that her doctor had also advised, six months ago, that Rachel stop taking the sulfa drugs to reduce the damage they were doing to her kidneys—but Rachel had refused, not willing to take the slightest risk of infecting her family, most especially the great-grandson she was determined to see.
Now Rachel was ready to pay her debt. Her body was leaden with fatigue and she spent many of her days too weak to get out of bed. Ellie stocked her refrigerator with prepared meals, but it was a struggle just to get up and eat them. Her face and legs grew more swollen with edema; a bloated imposter seemed to be staring at her out of her mirror. One day she began to have difficulty breathing and had to call for an ambulance to take her to Maui Memorial Hospital in Kahului, where they drained the fluid that had also been building up in her lungs.
On that day she knew she could no longer care for herself. So as she had always planned, she called Kalaupapa and told them she was coming home.
Ellie came over to pack up Rachel’s belongings for her, arranging to send them on to Moloka'i by freight, then drove her auntie to the airport. “Tell your mother,” Rachel said to Ellie, “that someone will always love her.”
“I will, Auntie,” she said. “I love you. Godspeed.”
A charter flight took Rachel to Kalaupapa, where she was promptly admitted to the hospital. The resident physician, Dr. Sylvia Haven, prescribed her a sedative that gave Rachel her first good night’s sleep in months.
Her old friend Hokea came by the next day to visit and reminisce; it was good to see him again, he always made her laugh. She barely noticed the ravages that Hansen’s had wrought on his face. “Rachel, you remember what I used to say about Father Damien’s church at Kalawao?”
“I remember you did about a million paintings of it, all beautiful.”
Hokea chuckled. “Maybe million and a half. But you remember what I used to say about it? How it had strength and maluhia?”
Serenity. Rachel nodded.
“Well, so do you.”
Their hands were similarly deformed, but Rachel now rested hers atop his, like two gnarled branches entwined by time and fate.
“Thank you, old friend,” she said. “I do feel at peace here.”
“No more kapu here either. Everybody’s free to come and go as they please.” He grinned. “So, you like go Vegas and try our luck at keno?”
He always made her laugh.
Rachel spoke by phone with Ruth often in subsequent weeks, but the calendar soon became a jumble of meaningless numbers; the morphine Rachel was prescribed for her worsening pain made the days pass in a painless dream, hazy as a morning mist.
Early on, Hokea had brought over some belongings that Rachel wanted by her bedside, and he agreed to keep the rest in his house. On a shelf above her nightstand—like the old orange-crate shelf in her bedroom as a child—was part of her doll collection, which had mushroomed over the years. From her bed she could see the little cloth wahine in her kapa skirt that her father had made for her when she was first sent to Kalaupapa, the cherry doll he had brought her from Japan, and the rag baby from San Francisco. Joining these were some from Rachel’s own travels: a stuffed koala bear from Australia; a Brazilian bahia doll; and a little dancing boy in a kiri'au skirt, from Rarotonga.
She smiled. They reminded her that she had, after all, visited those places she had dreamed of seeing as a child, the far-flung ports of her father’s sea tales. And more: She had known the love of the best man she had ever met, and would soon return to him. She had been sent to Kalaupapa by people who had expected her to die, and die quickly. But she had lived a long, rich life … and would leave it with nothing left unsaid, nothing left undone.
A breeze toyed with the curtains of an open window. She smelled the sweet fragrance of the red lehua flowers that grew on the nearby pali. She closed her eyes. Soon she would embark on her greatest journey, across an ocean of night to another far port, where her father had already dropped anchor—and where Kenji was waiting for her.
* * *
Whenever the phone rang that day, Ruth had answered it with dread calm, knowing of her mother’s worsening condition. When it rang late that evening, as Ruth and Frank were drifting off to sleep, Ruth knew: she just knew. It was, as expected, Dr. Haven at Kalaupapa, gently informing her that Rachel had just passed away, peacefully, in
her sleep. Ruth told her, with as much composure as she could summon, that she would be on Moloka'i as soon as she could book a flight. She hung up the phone, her hands trembling.
Frank said, “I really wish I could go with you.”
“I know. But you can’t risk flying so soon after your ear surgery. And Don is in the Maldives, he’ll be sick that he couldn’t go.”
“Call Peggy.”
She did, and Peggy immediately agreed to accompany her mother to Kalaupapa.
“Thank you,” Ruth said. “It means a lot to me.”
“I loved her too,” Peggy said.
Ruth hung up and took a long, shaky breath. Frank came up behind her, put his hands on her shoulders. “You okay?”
She nodded, taking strength from his touch. Then she went to the dresser, opened a drawer, and took out the envelope Rachel had given her. Inside was a piece of brittle old writing paper filled with careful penmanship—written when Rachel was still a young woman, before the disease robbed her of her right hand—and Ruth read aloud the first line in halting Hawaiian:
“Lawa, Pualani, 'eia mai kou kaikamahine, Haleola…”
Ruth continued, paraphrasing:
“Henry, Dorothy, 'eia mai kou kaikamahine, Rachel…”
Tears fell from her eyes, but she continued to read. She would get through this. She owed that much—and so much more—to her mother.
Epilogue
There were 155 residents living, by their own choice, at Kalaupapa, and nearly all of them were now gathered around an open grave in the Japanese cemetery along the coast. It was a bright, clear day, the tradewinds brisk, the surf lapping up nearby Papaloa Beach, where, Ruth knew, her mother had spent many happy hours riding the waves. It truly was beautiful here, and yet the green pali was just as forbidding as the Sierra Nevada, and this necklace of cemeteries along the coastline—like a lei strung not with flowers but with gravestones—was an abiding reminder of Kalaupapa’s tragic past. She stood beside Peggy as they listened to a Buddhist priest chant a sūtra and, toward the end of the ceremony, when the time came for eulogies, of which there were many, Ruth chose to speak last. She was more nervous than she let on as she stepped forward to address the crowd.
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